Syringe is an instrument for injecting or installing fluid such as medicine, vitamin, vaccine and etc. into the body or withdrawing liquid from the body. It is widely use in the medical field not only for injecting medicine it is also used for orally administering liquid medicine to children or animal without using a needle. It is because the accuracy of measuring the dose and easier to squirt the medicine into the mouth instead of using spoon.
In the usage of medical syringes, the reusable of syringes which may lead to cross-infection of diseases is a major factor to be concerned. Therefore, a great need of single use safety syringe to avoid cross-contamination or infection arises due to this concern. The single use safety syringe is useful in wide range of drug therapies for those frequently require a number of daily injections. The safety syringe also becomes great interest for those people who have limited physical ability. As such, the safety syringe should not inject with any diseases through the syringe, including HIV, hepatitis B and C viruses and other pathogens intentionally or accidentally.
Various single use safety syringes which administer subcutaneous medications have been used as being one way to avoid any potential problems. Among many advantages of such single use safety syringes include reduction of environmental pollution associated with contaminated needle disposal. Although many single use safety syringes have achieved public acceptance and commercial success in the marketplace, however, some single use syringes present a variety of problems. Accordingly, it is found that some syringes which claim to be “single use” in actuality can be reused with user intervention. Some syringes are designated as “single use” solely because they are to be discarded after use pursuant to a regulation; nothing prevents their reuse. Some syringe designs expose the drug or bodily fluid contained therein to reactive components of the syringe, e.g. a spring used to retract the plunger. Moreover, some syringes, although not capable of being reused, present health risks to the medical personnel handling them. In addition, there are some factors which may need to be considered such as their sophisticated design, and high cost of contemporary components.
In some countries, plastic disposable syringe is widely used in hospitals. This type of syringe is low cost, easy to handle and can be thrown away after use. However, the problem occurs when most hospital in some countries does not practice the single use safety syringe, but using the normal syringe. The safety syringe such as “auto disable” or “auto retractable” types are usually imported and expensive to use, and not all the hospitals in some countries are unaffordable to use such safety syringe. It is to be found that most of the existing inventions are focusing on manually retractable needle, protective cap and plunger as a safety feature. However, most of the existing inventions are design to retract the needle into the barrel. The design of the existing inventions is good for safety reason, but not convenient for disposal process due to the difficult of separating the metal (needle) and plastic parts (plunger and barrel).
In view of these and other shortcomings of the prior art there is a need in the art for an improved safety syringe. Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved safety syringe with a detachable and disposable needle support for single use.